Cold War Lessons Lost on Obama?

By

Iain Martin

Sep 17, 2009 10:01 am GMT

AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. administration’s abandonment of the missile shield programme today suggests that nobody in the administration has examined the lessons of the Cold War in Europe in any detail. Or if they have, they have been studying the 1970s and drawn precisely the wrong conclusions. They should read on into the 1980s to discover that concessions are only worth making from a position of strength and in return for equal or much greater concessions from the Russians.